Digital information appliances such as electronic books, personal digital assistants (PDAs) and portable information handling systems are well know in the art for storage, manipulation and communication of information. For many digital information appliances (e.g., pen tablet type appliances such as PDAs, electronic books, etc.), it is desirable that appliance's housing have a compact, hand-held form-factor. As a result, such compact digital information appliances rarely include a keyboard or keypad, but instead rely on displays having touch sensitive panel overlays employing touch or pen input for entry and manipulation of information.
With the growing popularity of the Internet and similar network information services, compact digital information appliances will become increasingly common fixtures of everyday life. Unlike present stationary personal computers, compact digital information appliances do not constrain the user to a single location while accessing information via a network information service, but instead enable the user to freely roam throughout his or her home or office. However, because compact digital information appliances lack a keyboard, entry of information such as commands, electronic mail (e-mail) messages, and the like is inefficient, reducing the advantage gained from increased portability.
Consequently, there exists a need for a digital information appliance having a keyboard type input device positioned on the appliance's housing so that the size of the appliance is not substantially increased in comparison to a like digital information appliance without such an input device. It would be desirable to orient the input device with respect to the appliance's display to facilitate efficient entry of information by the user via methods such as touch-typing or the like. It would further be advantageous to provide a means of aiding the user in locating keys of the input device wherein the input device is not viewable by the user while typing so the user may more efficiently use the input device for entering information.